December 2018 Release Notes
From itch.io: 'Steam Early Access Release!' December-28-2018 Hello everyone! Rogue Fable III is now live on Steam early access and will be continuing development there. I'd say the game is currently at about the 40% complete stage as of this first release so there is an enormous amount of content, balancing and polish coming down the line. I'm planning on spending the first month or so mostly just working on new content since we were in a polishing freeze for so long prior to the web release. Thank you everyone for all your feedback and support! Updates on Steam compared to the web release (as of Dec-18-2018): A lot of my time was spent just getting the game to run on the desktop but I wanted to get some new content done as well for people coming from the web versions. DUNGEON LAYOUT: * Iron Fortress moved to tier 3 to spread out the zones a bit more LEVEL GENERATION: * Extended the cave level generators so that they can spawn vaults within them. This is currently just used for a few aesthetic vaults and a challenge vault in the desert but will be very useful in the future. * Cactus's can occasionally spawn in the sunless desert in order to add a bit more color. I'm planning on extending the knock back mechanics to deal damage when you knock back enemies into walls and stuff like cactus and spikes should deal more damage in this case. * Pine trees can spawn occasionally in the ice caves (adds a bit more color). This is also the start of what I'd call sub-zoning, so slowly adding stuff so that some ice cave levels are alpine forest like and then adding unique enemies, items, objects etc to such a sub-zone in order to get some variety even within a single zone. * Added a new generator to The Dark Temple that generates temple like levels. * Added a new generator to The Iron Fortress that generates lava forge type levels. * These will eventually be extended to have unique content within them. * Steam vents will spawn on some Iron Fortress levels which knock characters back when they activate and block line of sight. * Toxic water added to sewers * Vault of Yendor can now spawn lava. * New unique generator added to Upper Dungeon NPCS: * Added Licky Toads, Chameleons and Tentacle Terrors with the ability to tongue/tentacle pull the player towards them. Will be adding a playable frog race soon with same ability as a talent. * Added Iron Imps to the Arcane Tower * Monsters behind glyph doors will no longer wait 2 turns before acting after the door is opened. * Rare cave bears that spawn in Upper Dungeon and can berserk. NEW TALENTS: * War Cry (barbarian): Fills your rage meter, stuns nearby enemies and alerts all NPCs in a wide radius as to your position. * Head Shot: allows ranged attacks to sneak attack. * Disengage: deals high damage and backs off a step. Killing an enemy with this talent will have no cool down. * Lunge: like a short range charge but dealing more damage. Killing an enemy with this talent will have no cool down. NEW CLASS: DUELIST * A melee character focused on movement, strafing and kill strikes. * Still missing a few talents but has Disengage, Lunge + general talents. * Will only reduce his short cool downs when taking steps. * Starts with a rapier which will deal crit hits when stepping into range. * This class is forking off from the barbarian who will be reworked a bit. RACES: * Races have been enabled though they are still in a rough stage and need a lot of work. I'd like to have each race have its own set of 2-3 talents that are added to your classes talents at the start of the game. NEW RACE: GARGOYLE: * A special challenge class * No natural hp/mp regen but his attunement to the earth will fully restore him each time he descends to a new dungeon level. * Permanently flying * Stone Skin Talent: increases natural protection. ITEMS: * Rapier: deals crit hits when stepping into range. * Crystal Breastplate: reflection * Elemental Robes: grant associated resistance * Spikes Shield: damages enemies that melee attack you * Charm of blinking changed to wand of blinking. I'd like to avoid infinite blinks since they tend to break a lot of the existing content and planned future content. * Changed wand of draining to a unique AoE spell that immediately drains health from enemies around you. Trying to give the wands and charms their own unique spells separate from talents. STATIC LEVELS_AND_VAULTS: * 10 more static levels (hand made). * 2 more configurations for the Vault of Yendor last level. * A bunch of vaults added to sewers. * 10 difficult vaults added to Vault of Yendor * 5 new special challenge vaults in various zones. LONG COOL DOWNS: * Barbarians and duelist will tick cooldowns that are larger than 100 normally. * There was the issue that barbarians paradoxically could not make use of the berserk talent due to its long cool down. * I'm considering changing these long cool downs to refresh only when the character gains a level or possibly when he descends to a new dungeon level. BALANCE: * As a note, pretty much all balance is subject to constant change and iteration. * Capped skills at 10 to reduce guaranteed power growth along a single dimension (most apparent with casters easily getting huge hit point pools). * Will be planning to move more of the power into items, talents and attributes, with skills playing more of a secondary role. * All mages start with generic Magic Mastery talent instead of their specialized ones (which still exist and can drop). This is to help them more readily make use of spells from different schools. * Power shot and tunnel shot now work with staves. I'm trying to get all talents to be at least somewhat useful for all characters. * Shock Spell has had its max spread range capped as it was pretty insanely overpowered. Will also show the targeting correctly when aiming it. * Equipment (non-stackable, non-consumable) spawned in standard chests and on the floor will try to never double drop. This should help mitigate the RNG somewhat by at least not giving you doubles of stuff you don't want. * Crystal Chest rooms are now more common in order to give the player more chances to make choices regarding their equipment. * Pit traps (but not big pits) will try to drop the player into a semi-safe position (approximately 10 tiles from the nearest enemy). This is to avoid cheap instant deaths falling into hoards. 'Update 0.50 - December-11-2018' Steam release is set tentatively to December 28th, still going through review so will hopefully know soon. If this update doesn’t break anything major, this should be my last update to the web version and I’ll now be turning my attention fully to getting at least some new content ready for the early access release. BUGS_AND_CRASHES: * Smoke resulting from flaming clouds was not correctly added to the tile (had all sorts of terrible crash/bug repercussions when new clouds were then added on top). * Fixed ice persisting on tiles even after the sprite was deleted (also was leading to crashes, most noticeable with flash freeze). * Finally isolated and fixed crash: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘cache’ of null which has been hanging around for months. * Fixed: player not centered on screen. * Fixed: several different crashes when generating new zones (descending stairs). UPDATE-0.49-December-10-2018: From Kongregate: Sorry guys, looks like some version of fire fox didn’t like the new save compression so it either wasn’t saving correctly or you were just locked out of the game at 99% when it tried to load a corrupt save. Hopefully this update should fix it for you. Please let me know if its still not working for you. BUGS_AND_CRASHES * New compression system that should work with all versions of fire fox. * If the game absolutely cannot load a save file, it will simply clear the corrupt save rather than locking the game out (message me if your stats are not recording). * Fixed weird visual crash on main menu if you left it running where all buttons/menus would bunch up in the upper left corner. * Fixed: falling in a pit w/ a monster on the down stairs. Coming back up the stairs crashed as the player and monster overlapped (player will be placed at nearest clear tile). * Fixed Charm ability not increasing in duration as tooltip indicated. * Fixed: Firefox cropping text weirdly (most noticeable at the top of the screen when using abilities). * Please let me know of any further issues and thanks for playing! UPDATE-0.48-December-08-2018: From Kongregate: * For anyone interested in seeing wins with all classes and general tactics Umbr has been recording most of his runs for awhile now:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qhPGCh-EEz-06zHiVHFVw * Added new staff art by TheBlackHand * Added new graveyard and record board on the main menu. * Added compression to save files so as not to run out of storage space. 'Update 0.47 - December-06-2018' MECHANICS_AND_BALANCE: * Reduced hit points of spiders, centaur warriors and centaur archers to reduce difficulty in The Under Grove. * Reduced hit points and damage of Crystal Golems to make them easier to kill with anything except range attacks. * Doubled the cooldown on NPC healers so that they arnt such a pain to deal with. * Stackable items will no longer work in the transfer table (was possible to buy and transfer enchantments from single darts). * There is a 50% chance for webs to break when taking damage (100% chance if fire). * Player will not longer gain experience for killing summoned (blue ring) enemies. In order to stop the possibility of farming NPCs like The Rat Piper. * Strafe attack will only trigger every other move if the player has fast speed (the combination was essentially doubling damage output). * NPC healers cannot heal NPCs that do not naturally regenerate: undead, clockworks, golems, summoned stuff like swords and fireballs. BUGS_AND_CRASHES: * Fixed items on the mouse hiding behind the ‘transfer’ button on transfer table menu. * Orbs of fire are now immune to sleep and all other status effects. * Made sure that preset static levels never double up in a single run. * Fixed arcane tower placing portals that blocked halls or doors. * Fixed Wardens sealing stairs so that the stairs are actually unusable. * Fixed a hard crash caused by wandering NPCs. * Added additional checks to AI to stop NPCs from attacking when out of sight. * Fixed auto exploring occasionally attacking mushrooms (thanks for video umbr) * Don’t allow bolt spells to target self (silly and was making player sprite invisible). * Sustained status effects will not immediately drop if the player does not have enough mana to sustain them (removing a +MP item). * Attunement does not reduce mana for sustained effects or summons. INTERFACE_AND_HELP: * Made sure the gates barring down stairs notify the player to look for a switch on the level. * Added a ? menu with all keyboard controls. Will add some more stuff here to give basic tips and knowledge. 'Update 0.46 - December-03-2018' * More graphics for charms by TheBlackHandBUGS_AND_CRASHES: * Charm will no longer be targetable on allies to avoid overwriting. * Fixed sprint and charge soft-locking the game when charmed by a succubus. * When the game tries to spawn ‘upgraded’ gear it will use the highest mod in the players inventory when he has two of the same item. * A switch will now spawn inside of the locked downstairs rooms in case you fall to the next level and need to get back up. * Charmed necromancers will not revive skeletons. * Fixed glitched out smoke appearing on all subsequent levels. CRYSTAL_CHEST_ROOMS: * Will always spawn 3 items from 3 different categories. * Will always try to spawn enchanted gear and better than player has, if player already has the item. QUALITY_OF_LIFE: * Allow , and . to function the same as < and > (don’t need to hold shift) * Allow S key to use stairs * Stairs mouse over description gives a bit of help text on how to use them. MECHANICS_AND_CONTENT: * Ice caves will now have a chance to spawn bear traps (didn’t have any traps before, will need unique ones in the future). * Your allies will now be teleported with you when using portals in the Arcane Tower. * Spawners will now give all the exp of the remaining NPCs when killed so that the optimal strategy isn’t to sit around grinding them.